


Who Am I?

by swinganditsgone



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, F/M, Female Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, How Do I Tag, Male-Female Friendship, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 06:55:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18138875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swinganditsgone/pseuds/swinganditsgone
Summary: Carol Danvers has just found out her true identity and past after Talos delivers the black box at Maria's home. Now, she must decide whether or not to trust the Skrull - the one thing she thought she was sworn to fight - and help him do what's right.





	Who Am I?

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of an AU in the sense that Talos doesn’t have a wife or daughter (I love them, I do, it’s just I was shipping Carol x Talos way before the big reveal and it won’t leave me alone). This isn’t really shippy but I think that I may add onto this in the future. Hope you guys like it!

She couldn’t hear anything. It was like a cloudy film spreading over her, like how sound became disorientated before eventually becoming barely distinguishable when you were submerged in water. The white noise of rolling underwater currents and nothingness took over. You were still able to understand that noise was present, but were unable to comprehend what was exactly being said. It mimicked the way it felt when you would cover your ears with your hands, not wanting to hear what was going on.

She was sure that Maria or Fury had quietly called after her as she made her way towards the doorway of the small wooden shed. Her mind was a mess, none of her thoughts seeming to make any sense, always ending in odd places of her thought process, or disorganizing the words in the sentence structure so that it felt like a foreign tongue was being constructed inside of her head. She couldn’t think straight. But while her mind couldn’t make sense of what was up or down, it seemed like her brain knew what to do. Electrical impulses sent signals down to her legs, her feet carrying her past the only other occupants in the shed. Her boots thudded softly against the wood as she briskly headed towards her only exit point. To the outside world. To fresh air.

She needed air. She couldn’t breathe.

Her strides seemed to lengthen once her foot touched the first blades of grass. She wanted to put as much distance between the computer and herself as possible. She could feel more than hear the sharp gusts of breath her body tried to take in. The action started to make her light-headed, and she paused. The last thing she needed right now was to pass out. The humidity sure wasn’t helping either, though. The Louisiana heat was still seeping through her clothes, even with the sun starting to now set. When she had first entered the shed, it had offered a reprieve from the southern heat. But as the recording had continued to play, she could feel herself only get warmer and warmer with each passing second. She was too hot. Her head throbbed. She couldn’t breathe.

Vers. Carol. Her name was Carol. Was that right?

She resisted the impulse to double over, hands on her knees, desperately gasping for the air that didn’t seem to be making its way to her lungs. She was stronger than that. After everything she had been through, she could get through this minor inconvenience. She needed to stay strong. Especially in front of the others. If she showed any sort of weakness… Yon-Rogg had always pushed her to be the best. No emotions. No weaknesses.

Yon-Rogg.

A shuddering breath left her slightly parted lips. She could feel the threat of tears stinging in the corners of her eyes. At that, she was frustrated. She shouldn’t be crying. Quickly, she blinked the tears away.

Heavy footsteps clunked against the aged wood behind he, signalling that her hearing was starting to return. The hazy film receding. Trying to get her breathing back under control, Carol took several slow and steady breaths. She wasn’t ready yet. She wasn’t ready to talk about what they had just heard. She wouldn’t know what to say, what to do. She tried to focus on something else other than the impeding individuals that were bound to ask her about what had just transpired in those four walls. What the black box had revealed to everyone.

She glanced around her surroundings, taking in the tranquil scenery. Such a sharp contrast to the chaos raging inside of her. Large, tall trees circled around the small clearing on Maria’s property, branches spreading out as far as they dared to reach, overlapping with those of their neighbours. It was as though they seemed to be encasing the property and all it held—the house, the shed, the plane, the occupants—in a protective hold. Hiding them from the harsh realities of the outside world and what lay beyond. A soft, golden glow of the evening sun radiated the world. The faint chirping of crickets had begun as night slowly began to approach. The low buzzing of cicadas far off in the distant felt familiar somehow. 

Another murky dream. Memory.

She took a deep breath. She still wasn’t ready to face what they had just discovered from the recording, but the confrontation was inevitable. And was going to happen sooner rather than later, whether she wanted it to or not. It was best if she got it done and over with. Right? Like ripping off a band-aid. She turned slightly to face the others, yet still not quite facing them head-on, face-to-face. She was on the defensive still, even if she was taking the initiative. It was only the five of them now. Talos’ men were nowhere to be seen, and Monica had obediently stayed at her perch just outside the shed door. Now, she stood. Unsure of what was happening now.

“He lied to me,” she said. Her voice sounded clear and steady. For that she was glad.

Maria looked at her, confusion worrying her brow about what she had just heard, but concern was written plainly over her face. The heaviness of her shoulders, the slight tilt to her head. She paused at the bottom of the steps, lost as to how to comfort her best friend. Talos’ intimidating form moved silently behind her as he made his way out of the shed and into the clearing. Fury stepped out, remaining at the top of the steps, keeping Monica company. He was just as silent as all the others. Genuine worry graced his features, a look that Carol thought she would never see on the man. He and Monica knew what it was like to be in the military, what happened behind closed doors that the public had no inkling of understanding of. But neither of them had had their identity stripped away from them. Been lied to about everything she ever thought that she knew. All of it. Gone.

She was angry, and she was hurt. Her whole life, or what she thought was her life, had just been shattered. She had nothing. The people she had trusted with her life were nothing but snakes in the grass, sinking their fangs into her with their poisonous words, thoughts, and values. Driving her away from what she knew was right. Pushing her to do what was wrong. All for their own needs. She didn’t know what to believe in anymore. She felt as lost now as she had when she had first woken up on Hala. When all she had was Yon-Rogg.

She could feel her eyes starting to burn, the hot tears making their presence known again, threatening to fall. She could feel her emotions pushing forth. She tried to dampen them down to no avail. Her throat tightened, making it increasingly uncomfortable to hold back the need to let out a frustrated sob. 

“Everything that I knew was a lie.” Her voice was hard with frustration, trying to conceal the need to cry.

Talos walked up to stop by Maria’s side. “Now you understand.”

“What?” she asked, irritation overriding her sorrow. “What do I understand now?”

“Yon-Rogg killed Mar-Vell,” Talos explained. He slowly began to walk closer to her. Carol tensed. “He killed her because she found out that she was on the wrong side of an unjust war.”

He stopped a mere few feet away from her. It was just far enough between them to make for an escape if the occasion arose, giving her some space, but also close enough for them to have a more intimate form of communication with Maria and Fury nearby.

“No,” Carol defended. “Your people are terrorists. They kill innocents. I saw the ruins on Torfa!”

Her voice raised at the end of her sentence, gesturing to the side with her arm angrily. The argument sounded weak, even to her own ears. But it was all that she could go back on. Ever since she had woken up on Hala that was what she had been told by the entire Kree nation. By Yon-Rogg. By the Supreme Intelligence. She had trained tirelessly, relentlessly, to fight for what she believed to be right. She had thought that she would be saving thousands—millions. How could she live with herself if what Talos said was true?

“Ruins that the accusers are responsible for!” Talos snapped back. His body was strung tight as a bow string. Everything about him was tense. A muscle in his jaw twitched as he tried to reign himself back in, trying to be reasoning and diplomatic instead of quarrelsome and looking for a fight. He tried to make himself less threatening by hunching his shoulders slightly, trying to appear smaller than what he actually was.

“My people lived as refugees on Torfa. Homeless ever since we resisted Kree rule and they destroyed our planet.”

Carol stood quietly, turning to face Talos fully now. She swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat. Talos had lowered his voice again, taking on a calmer and more soothing tone. Whether it was for her or his benefit, she wasn’t sure. He took a step closer to her. “And the handful of us that are left will be slaughtered next unless you help me finish what Mar-Vell started.”

He was so much closer now. She could see the fading sunlight reflecting in his dark eyes. His voice was just above a whisper now, becoming even more raspier with each caress of the words slipping over his tongue and past his lips. Carol watched him intently, still on edge. She noticed the way he leaned closer to her, lowering his head so that he was almost eye-level with her, though not quite.

“The core that she found would have powered a lightspeed ship capable of carrying us to safety. A new home. Where the Kree can’t reach us.”

“Lawson always told us that our work at Pegasus wasn’t to fight wars, but to end them.”

Carol looked over at Maria. For a moment, she had forgotten that she was there. She looked confident in her words, convinced and self-assured that what she was saying was true. And maybe it was. But Carol didn’t know. And that was what frustrated her. She didn’t know if she could trust Talos yet, but here was her supposed best friend backing him up, a man she had met under less than ideal circumstances and only a short time ago.

“She wanted you to help us find the core,” Talos tried to reason.

Carol redirected her gaze back to Talos, her honey-brown eyes locking with his deep purple. Her brow furrowed in confusion. “I already destroyed it.”

“No, you destroyed the engine. The core that powered it is in another location. If you help us decode those coordinates, we can find it.”

“You’ll use it to destroy us,” she argued weakly. Internally, she wanted to hit herself. Since his appearance in Maria’s house, Talos and shown no ill will towards any of them. And yet, the propaganda that had been drilled into her head on Hala still fought her each step of the way.

Talos bit the inside of his cheek and shook his head, standing back up to his full height, gaze falling to the ground in frustration. He took a steadying breath before looking back up at her. His face had softened more than she had ever seen, desperation pooling in his eyes.

“We just want a home.”

She said nothing for a moment. In a way, she could understand that. Could see from where he was coming from. For the longest time, she thought she was fighting for a noble and just cause with the Kree. She had lived and breathed for the chance to get out and fight alongside Yon-Rogg and their other Starforce teammates. Now, she realized that she had never truly belonged there on Hala. Minn-Erva rarely had anything to say to her and Korath had always shown some disdain towards her. Bron-Char and Soto would talk with her, but never anything close like how she and Yon-Rogg would. In fact, she had rarely ever gone off base. And now she had just learned that she had had a life here on Earth? With family and friends who loved and missed her? She couldn’t remember any of that until very recently. It might as well have not been her life at all, in a way. What did she have? Where did she belong?

Talos leaned down again, even further than what he had earlier before her ignorant comment. He regarded her with a look she had never seen on another before. Not ever towards her. In a way, it felt intimate. Like he was trying to pry into her soul and expose every thought or dream that she had ever had. 

“You and I lost everything at the hands of the Kree,” he stressed. “Can’t you see it now? You’re not one of them.” 

His words frightened her. Because deep down, she had a feeling that he was right. She wasn’t a Kree, but she didn’t really know if she was still human, either, after her time on Hala. Everyone has the need to be a part of something, to have a feeling of belonging. Once you lost that, it was like you were losing a part of yourself. You were lost. A lone wolf. Adrift in the universe. And that was what was most frightening to her.

“You don’t know me,” she protested. She didn’t like the feelings that Talos was evoking from her. For the longest time he had been the enemy. And now, she didn’t know what he was. “You have no idea who I am.”

He blinked at her, appearing just as equally confused as well as entranced by her words. She couldn’t begin to fathom why. She was just a lost little human who had been groomed by the Kree to be used as a weapon. She was nothing special. And he had to quit looking and talking to her as if she was. She thought that she wouldn’t be as aggravated as she was if he had just continued to acknowledge her as the enemy.

“I don’t even know who I am!” she hollered. Her face was scrunched in pain. Brow furrowed, lips pulling back into a grimace. Her eyes burned. Her voice was tight with emotion.

Maria stepped forward, her presence radiating a calming effect. Talos looked at her sympathetically before stepping back to let Maria approach. He turned so that Carol only had a side view of his imposing figure, diverting his attention from Carol to the environment around them. He was giving Carol room, and allowing Maria the chance to help try and support the conflicted blonde.

“You’re Carol Danvers,” Maria soothed. “You are the woman on that black box risking her life to do the right thing.”

She smiled. “My best friend. You supported me as a mother and a pilot when no one else did. You are smart, and funny, and a huge pain in the ass. And you were the most powerful person I know. Way before you could shoot fire from your fists. Do you hear me?”  
Carol found herself nodding. For the first time in what felt like ages, she felt her lips twitch at the corners into a small smile. Maybe that was what she needed. Talos could tell her what he knew just from observation and knowing her for such a short time, but the hear such conviction coming from who was her best friend was an entirely other fact. Monica had even said it herself. They had become her family before the failed flight with Mar-Vell, before arriving on Hala. From what she did know, Maria had never ever held any personal agenda against her. She knew she could trust her. And if she could trust Talos, then maybe so could so.

“Come here.”

Maria opened her arms wide, and Carol found herself accepting the hug enthusiastically. Maria’s arms wrapped around her shoulders, and they held each other close. This was her best friend. She had never given up on her. It was like she was finally starting to fill in the holes that had become a part of her. She let out a sound between a laugh and a sob. A stray tear fell from her eye, but was quickly whisked away by the fabric from Maria’s shirt.

Maria tightened her hold on her in assurance for a second before they finally pulled away. Fury watched quietly from the shed’s small porch, Monica standing back quietly. A bright smile graced her youthful face, white teeth poking out from between her lips as she watched her mother and “aunt” reconcile. Even Fury was smiling slightly as he lifted his can of iced tea to his lips. Carol smirked at the SHIELD agent. For a hardened soldier and Cold War operative, he was a soft man. His interactions with Goose attested to that.

She looked over at Talos to catch sight of him sneaking glances towards her. It was evident that he wanted to talk to her more about what they needed to do, but was also contemplating whether or not he should leave her be for a while longer lest they reach another deadlock. She supposed that she should be thankful for his consideration.

His hands rested on his hips as she approached him. She couldn’t help but notice how much larger they were than her own. She offered him the warmest smile she could muster up. His eyes narrowed slightly, watching her closely. She could feel his purple gaze sweep over her as she walked over to where he had wandered off to the side. Pausing in front of him, she crossed her arms in front of her chest and cocked a hip. She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, their eyes locked together, measuring each other up. Talos had changed his tune from their first meeting, and was willing to give her another chance. It seemed only fair for her to reciprocate the effort.

“Let’s talk about those coordinates,” she chirped, smiling.

She had to try hard not to laugh at the look of surprise on Talos’ face.


End file.
